


your loving is gold

by Anonymous



Category: Anne of Green Gables (TV 1985) & Related Fandoms, Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Both characters are well into adulthood, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Married Life, Married Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24830926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Anne,” he says, voice hoarse, and she finally looks up from gathering her gardening materials. In the back of his mind, Gilbert knows that he should have been assisting his wife, but he is physically unable to move. She tilts her head to the side, her brows creasing as she finally looks him in the eye. And Gilbert, as much as he wants to come off smooth, can’t help the way his voice sounds ragged when he speaks again. “You’re wearing my clothes.”
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 12
Kudos: 269
Collections: Anonymous





	your loving is gold

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gold by JoJo.

Gilbert is the type of weary that he only experiences when he’s been away from his wife for too long. 

Six and a half days, to be exact, and when he had crept out of their bed and kissed her sleepily stirring face goodbye, he hadn’t known how long he was going to be gone. Twice a year, he goes down to the Bog with Bash and provides free care to as many people as he can get to. It’s been a tradition since he’d graduated from med school— his way to honor Mary’s memory in yet another capacity. But now that Bash has two more little ones underfoot, he’d been needed in Avonlea more than Charlottetown, and Gilbert had been lost without his assistance. Lost and _slow_. He’s always careful to give the best care he can provide, but playing the role of doctor, nurse, and facilitator simultaneously hadn’t been easy. He’d been glad to have Mary’s friends around to remind people that they could trust him. Without them, Gilbert would’ve been completely stuck. 

But the lines had built up and when he had found himself unable to leave, he had sent an apologetic telegram to his wife alerting her to his altered plans. They don’t travel much without each other anymore— there’s a reason for that, Gilbert thinks wryly— but she’d had to attend to the schoolhouse and had been unable to disrupt her students’ lives just to take off to Avonlea with him. The result has been six and a half days missing the warmth of her body next to his in the morning, the sound of her talking to the chickens in the afternoon, and the way she lets him brush her hair on nights that she is particularly exhausted. Next year, he resolves to time it better. Being away from Anne for this long does nothing for him, and even Bash had teased that Gilbert was a great deal more tense than he had been in years. 

The moment he’d stepped off of the train, he’d set off towards home with renewed purpose, hoping that the lengthy walk would erase the bleariness he was feeling. He’s so exhausted he’d barely had the presence of mind to grab his things before he’d begun to walk. Now, as he spots their home in the distance, Gilbert feels relief wash over him. He’s already more at ease just seeing their little house of dreams tucked amongst the trees. Soon he will be close enough to hear the babbling brook and smell the sweet perfume of the flowers that Anne had spent the past year painstakingly tending to. 

The morning air is already giving way to the heat of the afternoon, and soon his dark coat and trousers will become unbearable. Gilbert pauses to remove his jacket and hat, to roll the sleeves of his shirt up, and to undo a few buttons before picking up his cases once more. Subconsciously, he speeds up, not wanting to waste another moment in getting back to his wife. 

He’s so busy anticipating Anne that he doesn’t notice when she is finally in sight. He sees the house first, with its brown shingles and the trees brushing over its roof. When they sit out on their front porch, Anne tells him that it feels like they’re sitting with the trees, like the branches have come down to the porch to spend time with them. And Gilbert has always loved that, loved the idea of nature bowing to her the same way she bows to it. 

It isn’t until Gilbert is a few yards away from the house that he notices the small woman in front of it. 

She’s crouched on her knees, fingers expertly plucking through her beloved begonias to root out any weeds. The watering can has been dropped at her side along with the hat that she had been wearing, and Gilbert already knows that she is going to be bewildered by the increase of freckles on her nose in a week’s time. But, as it is, he is incapable of smiling about it, or laughing, or doing anything other than standing there staring, because Anne is wearing his clothes. 

Not the clothes he wears now, but some old ones from before college that he’d never gotten around to throwing away. She’s wearing his blue and white striped shirt, buttoned all the way up and tucked into a pair of brown pants that he’d grown out of years ago. Her hair is swept off of her neck the same way it is every day, but the gardening has forced more pieces to fall out than usual, so that they brush against the top of his shirt where it rests on her shoulders. Her feet are bare as they so often are during the summer, but she’s wearing the gardening gloves that haven’t fit on his hands since before he had even known her, ones that he had kept more because of sentimentality than anything else. 

Gilbert Blythe is suddenly not tired. At all. 

He doesn’t mean to approach slowly, but he’s still locked on the sight of his wife wearing his clothes as though it’s nothing, and the result is Gilbert creeping towards her as though one sudden move will break the mirage. Once he’s close enough to see how her neck is flushed red from the sun, he gathers the presence of mind to clear his throat and say, very simply, “Excuse me, miss.” 

Anne’s in his arms in an instant, having leapt to her feet the moment she heard his voice, and is burying her face in his neck with a happy shriek at the sight of him. Gilbert drops his cases and wraps his arms around her tightly, trying to arrange his hands so that he is touching as much of her back as he can. He wants her pressed all the way against him, wants her molded against him in a way that reminds the two of them that being parted is no longer their natural state. This is where they are supposed to be now. 

“I missed you,” she says, muffled against his shoulder, and Gilbert pulls back to take her face in his hands. 

“I missed you too, Anne-girl,” he says softly, letting his eyes skate over her features until she finally gets impatient and kisses him, shucking off the gloves and letting them fall to the ground at his heels. 

Gilbert’s hands return to her waist, and that’s when he remembers that she’s not wearing a corset, which leads to him remembering exactly what her current state of dress is, which leads to a stifled groan against her mouth. Anne responds by wrapping her hand more firmly around the back of his neck, gently stroking his skin in a way that just makes it all so much better. 

He is really, really not tired. 

When Anne pulls away, however, eyes full of contentment at having him back, Gilbert realizes that she’s got no idea what she’s doing to him. She turns around to grab her (his) hat and bends over to pick up the watering can, affording him an excellent view of the way his trousers fit her. 

“How was your trip?” Anne is asking as she picks up the gloves that she had dropped behind him. Gilbert is still rooted in place, reeling and suddenly skin hungry in a way that he hasn’t felt since just after they were married. “I expect you’re hungry, or at the very least thirsty. Do you need to sleep? I can’t imagine taking such an early train was very comfortable, but, oh, you must tell me about your adventures in the Bog! I have so many stories about my students this week, I ended up jotting some things down for you as though I was writing you a letter, which felt silly at the time but I’m rather glad now because I can’t remember half of what happened last week. Did you spend much time with Jocelyn and Constance? How is Constance’s new grandchild? How was dinner with Matthew and Marilla? How are Bash and Delly and Hazel and--” 

“Anne,” he says, voice hoarse, and she finally looks up from gathering her gardening materials, blinking at the fact that he hadn’t moved at all. In the back of his mind, Gilbert knows that he should have been assisting her, but he is physically unable to. She tilts her head to the side, her brows creasing as she finally looks him in the eye again. And Gilbert, as much as he wants to come off smooth, can’t help the way his voice sounds ragged when he speaks again. “You’re wearing my clothes.” 

Surprised, she looks down at herself, at the shirt and trousers and her small bare feet amongst green blades of grass. 

“Oh, did you not want me to touch them? I was searching for clothes I’d be willing to get dirty after, well, a rain incident yesterday, and I noticed them near some of my old shifts in the back of the dresser and I realized how much _simpler_ gardening would be if I was wearing trousers.” 

She looks at him expectantly, clearly waiting for him to say that it’s fine, that he doesn’t care, but Gilbert can’t say that because he very, very much cares in all the best ways possible. He opens his mouth, sees the way the shirt billows gently over her chest in the light breeze, and closes it again. He takes a breath to speak, notices how the trousers look so different over her hips than they look on his, and exhales without saying a word. 

It’s not often that Gilbert lets possessiveness sweep over him. Anne is her own person, someone whose spirit he would never desire to control, much less make an active attempt to do so. He’d been raised to be a man of faith, to know that first and foremost people belong to God. He’d been taught to understand that marriage in which one spouse possessed all of the power was no marriage at all. And during the long years before they were married, when Gilbert had been away at school and Anne had been at Queens or in Avonlea, he had trained himself to recognize jealousy for what it was: a pointless, reckless emotion that had no place in a relationship such as theirs. A relationship of love, of friendship, of respect. 

But the sight of his wife wearing his clothing causes any rationality to vanish from even the darkest recesses of his brain. He drops his cases, his jacket and hat, and kisses Anne once, twice, three times before wordlessly lifting her off the ground and throwing her over his shoulder, marching the two of them towards the house. 

He’s well aware of the scene they’d be making had they any neighbors to spy on them. Gilbert, his jaw set, marching off towards the front door, his hand firmly on Anne’s behind. And Anne in men’s clothing, her hair spilling over the back of his thin white shirt as she laughs at him. He can feel her shaking against his body with barely repressed giggles, and in the back of his mind thinks that it would be politer of her to not poke fun at his romantic gestures, but it’s been so many days since he’d seen her that he can’t bring himself to mind all that much. 

With his hands full of Anne, he has to kick the door to the house open, and when he finally deposits her on the kitchen table, he’s half expecting an admonishment for his behavior. Instead, he finds her face pink and her lips stretched into a smile as she reaches up to stroke his cheek. 

“Well,” she says slyly, “if that’s how you reacted to me in your clothes, it’s a good thing I didn’t choose to try the suspenders too.” 

Still unable to speak, Gilbert stoops down to kiss her again, placing his hands against the table on either side of her. He kisses her openly, with all of his pent up desire for her from the past several days, trying to enforce how much he has missed her in the week he’d been gone. He isn’t accustomed to missing her anymore, to not having her next to him when he’s falling asleep or sitting across from him at the dinner table, asking him to spare no details in telling her about his day. It’s with a spinning combination of unadulterated love and unabashed lust that he kisses her deeply, a shiver sliding up his spine as Anne lightly trails a few fingers down his neck.

When he pulls away to look at her, he’s expecting to see mirth in her expression. Instead, he finds that Anne’s eyes have darkened in a reflection of his, and that she has subconsciously widened her legs to accept him closer to her body. Gilbert shifts, crowding into her space so that he can nuzzle the side of her neck, her cheek, her jawline before he finally returns to kissing her, this time letting her slide to the edge of the table so that she can pull him flush against her. 

He can feel the moment she finally gives in to body over brain from the way she sags against his body, opening herself to him until all he can feel is the warmth of her hands and mouth. He loves it when they’re like this, when their chests are pressed tightly together and nothing, not even the air they breathe, can come in between them. He likes to pretend that he can feel her heart pounding even though moments like these are neither new nor few. He likes the way Anne kisses him hard but is always soft with her hands. He likes that she and her curiosity will always be the ones to escalate, and that he can chase after her, match her, and then wait for her to do it all over again. 

But today he focuses mainly on the small mouth that hadn’t been on his in so long, at the way her teeth will occasionally graze against his bottom lip, at the way her hands have already drifted up to the buttons on his shirt like they’d been waiting for this very moment. They’ve been married for a little over a year and moments like these feel rhythmic in a way that they hadn’t been in the beginning, when everything was simultaneously tentative and eager and seemed to be colored in the bright, blinding white of her skin. He feels like he’s going half mad when Anne’s knees squeeze around him, her heels digging into his flesh. She lets out a whimper at the feeling of him pressed against where she needs him and so Gilbert presses closer still, his hips acting on their own accord, it seems, to torture her. 

It doesn’t take much longer after that for Anne to move his hand to her breast as if daring him to keep taking it slow. Her impatience when it comes to having him has always been one of his favorite things, so he takes his time just to make her face turn red with annoyance. He drops kisses down the fabric of the shirt until he finds the place where her nipple is pressing hard against the stripes. Then he opens his mouth and leisurely laves his tongue over the material, sucking hard on her nipple through the shirt. He takes the opportunity to slide up under the shirt with his right hand, all the way over her stomach until he reaches the other breast and gives it similar attention with his fingers. She’s so sensitive here— she’s sensitive in every which way— and when he finally opens his eyes to look at her, he admires the splash of pink across her collarbone and the way her knuckles are white against the edge of the table. 

“Anne,” he murmurs, wanting her to look at him again, and when she opens her eyes, he finds her pupils blown and her face lit up. “Sometimes I would wear this shirt and you would touch my sleeve and I—“

She cuts him off with a moan, finally ridding him of his shirt and following the path of his arms down to his trousers so that she can get them loose. Vaguely, Gilbert wonders if she’ll let them do this on the kitchen floor after what happened the first time they tried it, but he doesn’t have much room for thought because his wife knows exactly how to hold him if she wants to tease him and she is currently putting the knowledge to use. 

Oh, he just wants to be inside of her. 

“No more leaving,” she says stubbornly against his mouth, causing Gilbert to laugh a little as he works at the buttons of her— his— shirt. He doesn’t pull it off, instead choosing to let it hang open over her shoulders, merely pushing it to the side so that he can finally put his mouth on her bare breasts like he knows she likes. “Don’t laugh, I— ah— I mean it.”

“Hmmm,” he mumbles against her breast, feeding her stubborn annoyance when he doesn’t commit, but he’d missed her too and the truth is that he’s past the point of pretending he ever wants to go anywhere without Anne by his side. “So you missed me.”

He follows the hollow of her sternum, her clavicle, and licks a slow stripe up the center of her throat before pressing his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes. She’s been attempting to drag his trousers off of him with her feet, but when he presses a hand against her center, she stills. 

“I already said that,” says Anne breathlessly, squirming against his palm. Even though the material of the pants, she is mind numbingly warm. He can _feel_ how ready she is for him. 

“And did you think of me?” he asks, focusing his fingers on a specific area. She whimpers at the sensation of his fingers and finally manages to get his trousers off. When she lifts her hips, allowing him to slide her bottoms off as well, he finds that she is not wearing bloomers. “When you were falling asleep in our bed and I wasn’t next to you, were you thinking about me?”

“Every moment,” she says in a way that is so fierce it makes him ache somewhere deep inside of his chest. Anne lies back on the table, propped up on her elbows. “I’m incapable of existing a single minute without thinking of you, Gilbert Blythe.” 

He finally can’t help himself any longer, guiding himself to her and slowly sliding his tip inside. Anne clenches around him desperately, trying to pull him deeper, but he is captivated by the way his shirt is falling over her shoulders and the way her leg had become draped over the crook of his elbow without either of them noticing. He rocks slightly into her. The table squeaks as they move. 

“I need you in our bed,” he says firmly, sliding his tip out of her. Anne looks murderous. “I can’t— the way I want. Not here.”

It would be embarrassing to be so incapable of words if he didn’t love her so much, but as it stands he is utterly overwhelmed by her and has never pretended to be otherwise. And this, this right here, is why you marry for love. Because the desperation on her face turns to softness in a single heartbeat and then she’s taking his hand in hers and pulling him up the stairs, the blue and white striped shirt floating behind her. 

They collapse together onto the neatly made bed, kissing each other desperately as Gilbert settles some of his weight on top of Anne. He knows she likes that; likes the heaviness of his body on top of hers. It’s a security blanket, keeping her trapped in the moment they’re having until he can make her mind shut down in other ways. 

Despite their eagerness, she’s smiling against his mouth as he moves over her, lining up at her entrance and sliding over her a few times to make sure she’s ready. When she tightens the hand that’s grasping at his upper thigh and bucks her hips towards him, he finally gives in, lowering himself into her and allowing himself a few moments for his brain to go blissfully blank. 

Nothing else in the world feels this way. Nothing else feels like it does when he’s inside of Anne and her hair is splayed out across their bedspread, her eyes energetic and hopeful as she looks at him. Gilbert tightens his jaw and pulls her leg higher on his torso, chasing something that, with Anne, seems unnamable. He understands the logic of everything that they do in the privacy of their bedroom but, when they are together like this, none of those words seem to apply. 

Anne strokes his chin as his brain splutters back to life. The way she’s looking at him, so ardent and affectionate, reminds him that he wants to make this _good_ for her. He places his hands on her hips to steal even more control of their movements, his thumbs digging into her sides as he moves over her. Anne responds by squeezing her eyes shut and wrapping the bedspread in her fists, her chest heaving with the motions as she arches towards him. The shirt is crumpled towards her waist, having slid down her arms at some point, and Gilbert doesn’t even know when because he feels like all he can do now is watch Anne’s face and the way her back is bowing off of the bed, arching towards him. 

He can feel himself plummeting towards that moment where he is so deep inside of her that it makes leaving her body seem impossible. Anne is still underneath him, trying and failing not to make too much noise. Gilbert takes her hand in his and kisses the knuckles before leading both of their hands to the part of her that makes her squeeze tighter around him. As much as he wants to wait for her, he finds himself unable to stop from emptying himself inside of her, relief filling him to the brim as he thinks about the many ways they are joined together. 

Afterwards, Gilbert takes her breast in his mouth again while she touches herself in the way that they’d figured out she liked, just the two of them, right here in this room. He covers the entire side of her neck with his hand so that he can stroke the soft skin right underneath her ear, and when Anne grips onto his wrist and _squeezes_ , something in his heart expands. When she finally follows him over the edge, all Gilbert can do is press his nose into her cheek and breathe with her, listening to the way it sounds when she comes undone for him. 

It takes a few moments for Anne to catch her breath, but she laughs once she does, tilting her head to the side to kiss him sweetly. 

“Did you know,” she says, turning to face him where he is lying on his side next to her, “that you are the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes on?” 

“I think you might be biased,” he points out, rubbing a thumb over her wedding ring. 

“I resent the implication,” replies Anne, sounding, indeed, very resentful. “You just got off of a long train ride and you still look as though you’ve galloped out of the pages of a novel.” 

“And yet you still look better in my clothes. How is that fair?” 

Anne sighs contently, turning onto her side so that she’s facing him too. 

“You really did miss me?” 

Gilbert raises his eyebrows, looking at her rumpled hair and the shirt that is just barely on her body anymore. 

“Did I not show you enough?” 

He means it to be a joke, but Anne taps her index finger pointedly against her chin as though she is mulling it over. 

“Did you not show me enough?” she says, musingly, mocking him. “Well, I don’t think I have enough to compare it to. Maybe you should show me again?” 

Gilbert shrugs, pretending that his heart isn’t lifting with joy at the faux coy look she’s giving him. 

“Well. If you insist.” 

Her laugh turns into an exhale as he slides lower on the bed, accepting her challenge with a vengeance. 


End file.
